CARLETON PALMER II – GREY FLASH/TTR RACING CHAMPION Bill Hoddinott MPH 691 Page 15 Carleton Palmer II, or CP2 as his friends sometimes call him, is widely known in Vincent circles for his genial personality and lifetime dedication to the marque. I first met him about 35 years ago. Along the way, he acquired a Grey Flash and a pre-war T.T. Replica, and about twelve years ago he 'heard the call' to vintage racing. The bug bit deeply, and since then he has distinguished himself in that difficult field by winning several national championships in American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association competition. AHRMA is the leading American vintage racing organization.

From various sources it was clear that Carleton has delved deeply and successfully into the secrets of Vincent Single road-racing. I contacted him to ask for an in-depth interview on what he's learned, and he kindly agreed to share it. It is a pleasure to bring you this story! BH: Carleton, thank you for agreeing to an interview. Many Vincent people want to know your racing story and what you've learned about racing singles. It's not easy to win championships in AHRMA; I've seen some of those races and there are plenty of tough and determined competitors on the track! CP: Sure, Bill, I'd like to tell the story. BH: I'd like to cover everything about your bikes and what you found out about tuning, preparation and riding. But before we go into that, would you tell us about your own background, and how you got into motorcycling. CP: I came along in `49 into a family that lived on the north shore of Long Island, New York. It happens that in 1904, my great-grandfather acquired the Squibb drug company from the family of Dr. Squibb, who founded it around the time of the Civil War, in Brooklyn, New York. Most of our male family members worked in it, up to my father's time. I'm rather proud of my dad, he was a Yale man, and served as a naval officer and PT boat captain during the War on dangerous clandestine operations. Putting spies on and off beaches behind enemy lines, things like that. After the war he went to Harvard Business School, and joined the family firm. He probably expected to have his career there, but the firm was sold to others after a few years, and the family members working in it were gradually pushed out. Dad took his share and set up a company of his own in the new (it was now about 1955) industry of epoxy resins; which he rightly thought had a great future. American Mediseal was its name, and he established plants in several cities around the country. Unfortunately, it was Dad's fate to develop cancer of the sinuses in `57, and by `59 he was gone. It may be that the chemicals caused it. Not that much was known then about the toxic effects of those substances. BH: I know his passing must have been quite a shock to the young lad you then were. CP: It was, but my Grandfather had stepped in during his illness and filled his place. He was just like a Dad to me. Taught me to drive, hunt and shoot, all the things a Dad does. But even before `59 there was something that imprinted motorcycles on my young brain forever.

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BH: Which was...? CP: It chanced that our home was not far from Port Washington, L.I. and as a small boy my Mom would take me in the car to go shopping, down the main street of that town. Right past Ghost Motorcycles! BH: Omigod, I well remember that famous establishment. I visited it myself one winter's day in 1960. That was the outfit that sold British, German and Italian bikes. The boss was a man named Pops De Feo, and his son Sal was the "Ghost". There was a legend that the service dept was a bunch of mechanics straight from Italy who spoke no English... CP: Exactly. Well, in the mid-'50s every nice day year-around Pops (who dressed like an Italian grandee and surveyed his store from his second-floor office) would have his staff push all the new bikes out front and line them up. 100-125 of them, in a gleaming row up and down the street in front of the store. So I'm this little kid looking out my Mom's car window at this dazzling display, for years. Naturally, as soon as I got big enough, I went right over there and started to hang around. And yes, I can confirm that the basement shop was full of guys in light blue jump-suits, who gabbled (as it seemed to me then) in Italian. I saw that motorcycles were something gorgeous and heroic, and I wanted a place in this world! BH: What about your schooling? CP: It was thought that the public school education was not too good around our area at the time, so I was sent to private school until 11th grade. But at that point, I asked to be allowed to finish up in public school, which I did, and I can tell you the latter was a lot more fun! Next, I enrolled at Boston University, planning to major in political science, and spent the next three years up there. Along the way, I had acquired a Norton Commando which I was using for transportation. Now, you know the `60s and `70s were a time of student and radical protest in this country, over the war in Viet Nam and all. And not only that, but the value of almost every traditional institution was being brought into question by young people. I doubt there were many thinking young folks of the day who weren't affected by this movement. I know I was. BH: Well sure, I think we all were more or less. CP: All over the country you had student protests going on. In some places they really amounted to riots, and the police were trying to keep order. Sometimes the police would get excited and beat up demonstrators. It was a bad situation. At Boston University we had some of these protests and the students would trash and vandalize the school. This was sickening to me, and I didn't care to involve myself in it. But I did read all the literature that was going around, which emphasized the supposed corruption of everything in government and in business; and I saw that a lot of it was all too true. These ideas made me lose interest in completing my studies and I left college in the third year; sort of `dropped out' I suppose. I determined to go to a small town and try to find a peaceful life where I could live my own way. BH: I suppose that's how you ended up in Putney, Vermont, where you still live. But how did you make your living? CP: Just about the time I was pondering all these things, my share of the family money came to me. It wasn't all that much, but by some combination of study and luck on Wall Street, I have managed to remain independent ever since. BH: I'm sure that's a story in itself. CP: Let me back up and tell you that in the years after BU, I did come to realize that a business that sells a good honest product or service, makes a living for its employees and lasts a long time, IS a valuable thing in society. Notwithstanding the ideas flying around in the `60s. Anyway, I did a study of investments, and read about a man named Warren Buffett, who had an investment company called Berkshire Hathaway. I saw he was an extremely shrewd and successful man of business, and at the time was selling shares of his company to investors. So I put a big piece of my nest-egg with him, and it has been very successful ever since. Besides that, I also made other investments, some good and others not so good. But the net result is I've never had to work for a pay-cheque. For five or six years in the mid-late `70s, my close friend (and landlord at the time) Victor Olson and I ran a Britbike shop out of some converted horse stables on his farm in Putney. I named the business Goldhawk Cycles after the road that Conway Motors was on in Shepherds Bush, London. There we worked very hard buying, selling, repairing and restoring Vincents, Ariels and other British bikes. That was very, very good training on both bikes and the basics of business. It was then that I joined the Vincent Owners Club, and went to the first Shadow Lake Rally. John Andrews really kickstarted the rebirth of the North American branch of the VOC with his infectious enthusiasm. The Vincent obsession had taken a firm grip on me and I was buying, selling and trading all manner of English machinery; and stashing as much

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Vincent gold as I could find. I met Ted Pratt who was running Pratt's Vintage Motorcycles in Greenwich, London and we hit it off. More exotica than I could handle became available!

When you get into this, you get a chance to acquire some nice things. Like a lot of people, I wanted a genuine Black Lightning. A couple of them slipped through my fingers when they came available, and I could have had them. But perhaps it was for the best, because this genuine Grey Flash did come my way; and after a curious combination of circumstances I managed to buy it. And I wouldn't actually have been able to DO anything with the BLs if I had gotten them; but as things worked out, I got into serious racing with the Flash eventually. I've had a HUGE amount of fun with it. I also was fortunate to acquire a T.T. Replica, and way back in 1979 the Series A Rapide V1003, from Ted. This was the third production Twin the Works made. I traded him an original unrestored 1948 WR-750 H-D racer and a very late Daytona KRTT-750 Harley. All the bikes have stories, of course. BH: Okay, let's go into some of them next! Bill Hoddinott MPH 692 Page 14

BH: Okay, there's a good story about your Series A Twin, V1003, let's get it on the record. CP: Sure. Over a time span of roughly 15 years ownership, and speaking with Bob Stafford, John Kidd and John Mellor, I discovered that V1003 had originally been purchased by one Ted Frend. John Mellor disclosed that Ted was still around, living near Brooklands just outside London. I got in touch with him by phone while visiting England in 1996 and he invited me to come to see him. Ted and his wife were so open and gracious that I had a lovely and very educational visit with them both. He told me a charming tale. It seems that as a young man in the early `30s he was a keen motorcyclist, like lots of other lads. He went to the annual motorcycle show held in November 1936 at Olympia Court in London. His plan was to part exchange his `32 500cc OHC Ariel Square Four for the new 1000cc model just announced. At the show, on his way to the Ariel stand he saw a crowd around the Vincent-HRD display. There was Phil Vincent and V1000 the brand new prototype A Twin! So of course he ogled it, and PCV chatted him up a bit. The end result being a very

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generous trade-in allowance arranged by Phil for Ted's SQ4 (sight unseen) with Ted's local Vincent-HRD dealer (W.A. Colgan's of Brixton Hill) who was attending the show as well. Next thing you know, Ted was invited down to the Works to try the bike out! Obviously, Phil Vincent was looking for buyers. A few weeks later Ted DID go up to Stevenage and outcomes PCV saying "Hop on!" (the prototype Twin). Ted naturally assumed Phil meant pillion. "No," says the latter, "the front; I'll get on the back." So he did, and with `The Boss' on the pillion pad away they went up the Great North Road on the Twin! After a short and impressive spin, where 98 mph was observed on the clock, they came back. Ted asked Phil, "When can I have mine?" This was in December `36. It was not until May `37 that Ted took delivery. Ted rode it for a long time, racing it extensively in hill-climbs. He earned a Gold Star at Brooklands on it by averaging 110 mph a lap during a race in `39. Short story long, the bike has come clear down to us now essentially intact and original! BH: Carleton, that's a great story! It's wonderful that the bike was preserved, and you were fortunate to be able to acquire it from my friend Ted Pratt. CP: Yes, there was some serendipity at work there. Ted is from an old New England family, and I've known him for ages. You know he went over to live in Greenwich, London in the `70s for a few years and accumulated a lot of choice vintage bikes. Later on, he decided to focus on vintage Harley racers and dispose of his Vincents and other stuff. That's how we were able to do a deal. BH: Now tell us about the Grey Flash. CP: This Flash (one of only 3 sent to North America) was originally shipped in `50 to Wellesley Trading in Ontario, Canada. This is mentioned in the Denis Minett Notebook. A serious racer named Eddie Stidolph bought it. He raced it very successfully around Ontario for a few years, winning a Canadian championship on it. And by the way, he asked the Works for a Big Port head and 1-7/16" T.T. carb for it, after reading about the `50 Works T.T. bikes. Stevenage sent them to him in `51. The plan was to campaign it at Daytona, but alas that never happened. The BP head and carb were on it when I acquired it in 1979. There's quite a story about that. BH: Which is...? CP: Okay, the first time I ever laid eyes on this bike was when Gene Aucott brought it up to the Shadow Lake Rally in `75. It had what we now consider a good amateur restoration and was remarkably original down to its 20" rear Avon Racing tire. Naturally, everybody admired it. Gene was cagey about who actually owned it, because he had a plan to acquire it himself. The owner had loaned it to him to show at the Rally. It was love at first sight, and I wondered if I might be able to buy it myself. So I worked on that for a while, and it took a long time; but finally I found someone who knew that the Flash belonged to Wayne Leidy of Morgantown, Pennsylvania. I got in touch with Wayne, and went to see him. This was already two or three years later. Wayne was vague at first and not really in the mood to part with it. Some more time went by, and finally he said he might. But when I tried to consummate a deal, he changed his mind and said he couldn't, because he had given his ol' pal Gene Aucott first refusal. He would have to give Gene a chance to buy it. So I figured my opportunity was going to disappear... A year passed. I called Wayne again. Asked him if Gene had bought it. He said no, Gene hadn't done anything. So over I went to see Wayne again. This time, we DID come to an agreement. I had to take a lightly `chopped' C Shadow (banana seat, staggered HD Sportster-style dual pipes and bobbed fenders) for $1500. He would let me take the Flash for an additional $5000. These numbers were much bigger to all of us in `79 and I gulped; but decided to go with the deal. And I've never been sorry! BH: You've had great racing success with the GF in the last ten years. When did you first put it on the track? CP: It sat in my shop for a while, although it was in perfect running condition; and totally stock and original. In the mid `80s I sort of got in the mood, and took it to a Track Day at Loudon, New Hampshire for a good tryout. Took Tom Wegman's old short-stroke `59 500 Manx too but that scared me to death, it was so fast! While running the Flash the exhaust valve seat insert of the early BP head came loose. It made a loud clanking sound. I found this out when I checked it over, but it didn't hurt anything. I sent the head to Mike Parti in Los Angeles for repair, since he seemed to be the best qualified shop for that very important job. He did it right, too; it never came loose again and I did race it a few times later. BH: But you didn't go forward with serious racing at that time.

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CP: No, I wasn't ready for it yet. Plus, I was still married then. Like most vintage bike enthusiasts, I'd had a lifelong admiration for `the hard men' who do the serious racing. Men like John Surtees; and by the way, many years later I had the good fortune through my own racing to get acquainted with John. The Isle of Man was and is a hallowed place to me. And I always had great respect for the AMA racers and Daytona, etc. But, I well knew that motor racing is dangerous. I'd seen that close up as a college boy. I helped an SCCA race team one summer. One of the guys got killed in an open-wheeled Formula Ford car. That was sobering. In the `80s I was very busy buying and selling bikes, and didn't think much about racing. BH: Okay, when did you get into it? CP: In `94-'95, and I'll tell about that next. Bill Hoddinott MPH 693 Page 13 BH: Okay, let's go into your Grey Flash racing. How'd you get started? CP: In `94 I was about ready for it. My life had changed, the setting was right and so was the time. It happened that there was a vintage motorcycle racing club called the United States Classic Racing Association run by Bob Coy in New England. I entered a few of their meets and practiced with the Grey Flash. But I realized that there was not enough participation in that series for early postwar racers. Virtually no period correct racers entered. The American Historic Racing Motorcycle Association was really where the action was. And AHRMA remains the dominant vintage motorcycle racing outfit over here today. For one thing, it had the famous English World Motocross champ Jeff Smith ramrodding it, and he was the right man for the job. Tough enough to run it successfully in the face of all the big egos that frequently came at him. Jeff did it for many years and finally retired recently. Anyhow, my first AHRMA meet was at Gratton, Michigan in June of `95. Gratton is a two-mile track with a 3200 ft straightaway. A `technical' sports car racing track with a 160 degree hairpin and a downhill reverse camber curve. I managed to get the Flash through tech inspection successfully and placed mid-field in both Class C races. The next meet was at the Mid-Ohio sports car facility in Lexington. This is the premier summer vintage race meet of the AHRMA season. There is always a huge entry (often larger than Daytona) at this mid-July weekend event. The track is 2.4 miles and a very demanding technical circuit with treacherous cement inserts at key points through curves. Practice sessions were crowded with so many racers entered. It made for extremely hazardous conditions due in part to the sheer numbers of racers getting in each other's way. And of course, some of the riders were novices, over-excited and no clue what they were doing. The number of crashes is always way high at this event. You will find that there are two or three tiers of talent and bike preparation at the AHRMA meets. This is early days, and I have a 10 to 1 Arias forged piston and my original Big Port head with a 32mm Amal T.T. clip-fitting carb and stub. I have the 1-7/16" T.T. that came with the BP, but not yet the information on the correct set-up and jetting for it, so I haven't been able to get it to work right at all stages. Hence the 32, which works perfectly on the Sunoco event race gas we're all using. I've got a Gary Robinson stellited Mark 2 cam in there and have been using a shop with a chassis dyno to set the bike up. It's showing 29-30 rear wheel horses @6000 rpm running a 2" x 44" exhaust pipe. Ignition advance is at 32° with the BT-H TT magneto. As I mentioned, Mike Parti had replaced the exhaust valve seat in the BP head, and it stayed put after he `breathed' on it. The GF lower end has an Alpha bearing and the original Vibrac conrod. I had an Avon track compound 300x21 rib tire on the original Flash front wheel, and a 19" Avon AM 18 round-profile track compound rear on an alloy rim. There being, of course, no available rear track tire for my original 20" GF rim! This 21/19 tire combo, by the way, with the track rubber was very, very good and gave the rider a lot of confidence that it would hold in the corners. Which is, of course, where most of the racing goes on. I had my original GF Electron brakes on there, and as advertised, by this age they were somewhat decayed by corrosion. But I never used them too hard and they never failed on the track. At the time I ran a standard Koni shock on the rear and a standard Armstrong front shock as originally fitted to the Series D range. To set the stage for this Mid-Ohio meet, let me tell you about Ralph and Ozzie Auer. Ralph is Ozzie's son, and they were a dominant team in Class C and Pre-'40 AHRMA racing with their 1939 R51/SS 500cc pushrod BMW. This old bike had a plunger rear suspension and teles up front, and it doesn't sound like much of a racer on paper. Wrong, that thing flew, revving to 9000 rpm and Ralph could really ride it! I dunno why he wanted to ride so hard and was so determined to win, for nothing but glory. But he did. You get on the track with him, you'll have a hell of a time beating him. He'd almost rather fall down hard than not whip you! Okay, this particular day at Mid-Ohio, I'm in the Saturday race, and I'm well aware that Ralph is the man to beat. Somehow, it's a day when I'm on my game. I feel loose and comfortable running at the highest speed. Right on the edge of what the bike can do. Ralph is way out front leading, but at about the halfway point I suddenly catch a glimpse of his red leathers far up ahead! I gradually catch up and on the last lap I surprised him on the inside line

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around the final corner (known as the "Carousel"), on to the front straight and the chequered flag and won the race! I can hardly believe it. The next day, of course, Ralph runs away with the race. Totally unbeatable. Nobody can get near him, including me. But this was my defining moment. I see now that I can compete at the top level in this championship, and it's something I badly want. So from that time on I started to follow the gruelling AHRMA national series, travelling all over the country, and developing my bike the rest of the time. BH: Carleton, I can see all that. You had put yourself on a tough, demanding quest. And later, after paying a lot of dues, you did make National Champion in your classes several times. Before we go into development, tell us how you would evaluate the basic suitability of your GF for serious racing. CP: Bill, people have no idea just how good it was compared to the other bikes of its day! I've tried a few other Class C and Pre-'40 bikes various people were racing, and most of them were 'Conestoga wagons' by comparison. The Flash was light-years better: first and foremost was the superior suspension; a tight, safe-feeling, good-handling bike that you could throw around with confidence. You knew what it would do. It was always that way, and got better with development. Over the next few years I worked on the power train too, of course. The postwar Vincent was designed/engineered as a 1000cc twin. With just the 500cc cassette bolted in you had a wonderful combination of under stressed overbuilt components to optimise. First principles... low centralized mass inclined forward. Voila', a Comet/Flash! I learned early on that top speed is not so much of a factor in this type of racing. What counts most is a good wide range of torque so that you can accelerate hard in the gears out of the corners. Of course you need a dead reliable clutch and gearbox. With a 500cc single like this limited to four speeds you want the best torque in the range of 4000 to 7000 rpm. Not 4500 on the low end, 4000! And not 8000 on the top end, 7000! It's not that hard to change your power range with cam timing and gas flow work, but it's easy to overdo it and end up with something with big horsepower numbers that's slower on the track. For example, I can't tell you what the absolute top speed of my bike is, because I've never had a chance to find out! But I will tell you that a Grey Flash can be made to compete head-to-head with a good original late model Manx Norton on a tight road circuit if you put the development work into it. BH: That last is impressive. Of course we know that when John Surtees started out with his Flash, and the ex-TT GF the Works loaned him, he was very competitive with the best Manx Nortons of the day. Okay, what happened next? CP: Obviously, there was a huge amount to learn about road-racing. It's exhausting, and scary at times as you push yourself as hard as you dare. I was best when I was chasing people, and I will tell you that the "red mist" the old-timers speak of does exist. I had it a couple of times. But if you want to get to be an old man, you can't really afford to ride quite that hard all the time! After all, this was merely vintage racing. No prize money to it, just the glory of a national championship at stake. We weren't going to be offered any Works rides or any big money contracts. Some of the fellows rode like it, though! But to win a championship, you have to put the hours of devoted work into your bike prep and you have to spend some money. You have to go to all the meets and put up with the expense, inconvenience and discomfort of travelling.

1937 TT Rep 1998 AHTMA Race MID Ohio – Photo courtesy Carleton Palmer II In 1997 I won the AHRMA Class C National Championship, which is for postwar racers through 1951. Engine size restricted to 500cc. OHV/OHC race bikes including Norton, Manxs, Triumphs, BMWs, Guzzis, Gileras and BSA Gold Stars. By this time I was also racing my pre-war T.T. Replica and took the Pre '40 class with it that same year. In `98 I repeated in both classes. In 2000 1 took Class C again. In 2001 came second in Class C. In 2003, at Gratton where I started,

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I won a Pre-'40 race with my TTR. That proved to be my last race. I felt like I'd done enough with it, won my championships and showed the world what Vincent singles can still do. At a point, you've had enough of the 2000 mile round-trip drives and all the work involved in competing at the top level in any form of motor sports. I was mostly a one-man band travelling, but with knockout support from many Vincent enthusiasts once at the track. And behind the scenes there were so many Vincent stockists, machinists, and a magical network through the Club. It would take too much space to include them all, but I have to mention Ian Hamilton particularly. We became good friends and his knowledge, which he shared with complete generosity, was a key factor in my program. BH: Carleton, that was a tremendous showing and certainly everyone in the VOC was proud of you! I want you to tell us all about the TTR story later but first, let's go over the technical development of your GF in the next part. CP: Sure, Bill, it was a long process and I learned a lot from it. Bill Hoddinott MPH 694 Page 13 BH: Carleton, from our interview chats I see you did mountains of work for years with your racing program, and you could fill a fascinating book with it! But for present purposes, let's go over a summary of the development process you had on your Flash; and later, your TT Replica. To me, one is as interesting as the other. CP: Sure, Bill. Any racing effort is an intense and steep learning curve. We've all read the books and seen what others have done, but nothing's like getting your hands on and doing it! As I mentioned, I started off pretty modestly with the Flash very standard. I had the BP head on there, but had to use a 32mm IT. carb for lack of tuning info on the bigger one at first. Almost from the outset, I did use a Dynojet inertial rolling road at Tek Cycle in Gill, Massachusetts for testing. So I could really see what I had and give my equipment a good stressing before taking it out to a meet. That shop was about 45 minutes from my home. At first, before I learned how to negotiate with them, they charged me an arm and a leg for dyno time. Later, I was able to acquire an older, simpler rolling road load dyno on the cheap to set up at my home shop. This was much more convenient, but less precise. As an aside, I highly recommend anybody who wants to get into serious vintage racing to get access to one of these dynos. An experienced operator is also very important, as I discovered. The advantages of one are obvious. But there are a lot of safety considerations to using them. The bike has to be fully secured while roaring away at full power and high revs with the rear wheel driving the dyno. It could blow up then, or break the rear chain. I had the latter happen once, and it threw it across the shop hard. You DON'T want to be in the way when anything like this happens! My first edition of the Flash was showing 29-30 rear wheel horsepower (rwhp) at 5800-6000 rpm with 31 ft lbs of torque at 4500. BH: That may not sound like too much to some people, but from all I've seen, it would equate to probably as much as 15-20% more at the crankshaft. There seems to be a pretty high loss through the drive train, down to the rear tire contact patch, with both race cars and motorcycles. CP: That's right. Anyway, I was in touch with Ian Hamilton very soon (having read his articles in MPH) because I wanted to go to the state of the art ASAP. Ian had already developed a modification for a standard Vincent front head, patterned after the short-stroke Manx Norton. To use effective squish bands at both sides of the chamber, together with two plugs. So I dropped a standard front head off with Bob Dunn on a trip to England, and he re-machined it to Ian's specs. This involved milling up into the sides of the crown discreetly, not enough to weaken the structure, to provide squish bands at 90 degrees. A piston like that of a Manx Norton has to be sourced, giving .040" squish clearance and 11 to 1 compression The clearance is needed to avoid the risk of piston and head touching at high revs. The squish bands give better turbulence and fuel-mixing than the open chamber. With two plugs you bring the spark lead back to 28 degrees and the result was a jump to 35 rwhp! BH: Not bad! As an aside about the squish clearance just for a second, a very successful blown fuel car dragster champ I recently interviewed told me that he experimented with these clearances. He found that at .020", there was evidence of light contact twixt pistons and head at racing revs. He didn't think that was necessarily harmful, but to be on the safe side he changed it to .030" and didn't see any more contact. He wanted to minimize the clearance to get the most benefit from the squish turbulence. Okay, what was next? CP: I had to try different ignitions to get one that would give two simultaneous good sparks at all the revs I wanted to use. That is, up to 7000. 1 ended up with a Lucas Rita firing two 1.5 ohm Dyna coils.

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The Mark 2 cam is a torque monster, but signs off at 6000. I got a 105 cam from Ian Hamilton, and this lost 1-1/2 to 2 ft lbs of torque, but it held the torque strongly up to 7000 so gave the best results on the track. As I said before, I wanted a good strong torque band from 4000 clear up to 7000 because that's what you need in a racing 500 single to win races. BH: To back up for a minute, did your original GF BT-H magneto give good service? CP: Sure, I used it for the first two seasons when I was using one plug, but I had to keep rebuilding it because the armature would go bad. A rotating-armature mag will not last spinning it to 7000 rpm. The BT-H was always good ignition, and still is, but nowadays it's hard to find good shops to service it. So it's not so practical for vintage racing. I think it was always the same story with these, and in the old days Vincent or Norton teams would take a half-dozen spares along with them to a race; and expected to change them often. Between races the bad ones went to the mag shop. But neither piles of spare mags not, plenty of expert service facilities exist now.

The next step in the development was a Terry Prince head, which also had the so-called bath-tub combustion chamber with squish bands and 11 to 1 compression. About this time John Renwick agreed to sell me a cam which had even more lift and timing than the Hamilton 105. By now I had my 1-7/16" T.T. Amal on there, with good tuning info. On the dyno with 22 degrees spark lead on the two plugs, I saw 38 rwhp. Later, with the Prince head optimised and the combustion chamber re-machined to Manx shape, I did see an all-time best of 43.4 rwhp at 6700 revs and 36.6 ft lbs of torque at 5800, using a late 500 Manx exhaust system. BUT, the Manx megaphone hurt the bottom of the rpm range too much. So with more experimentation, we found that a BSA Gold Star megaphone exhaust would keep good power down to the 4000 1 wanted, and still give 41.3 rwhp, so this is what I ended up with as my best combination for the 4000-7000 rev range. I might mention that I did consult an excellent gas flow expert that the Cycle World tech journalist Kevin Cameron told me about. Once he understood what rpm range I wanted to use (at first he wanted me to go for huge horsepower at 8000-9000 rpm), he did a lot of good things for me with the various heads. But you understand that before I went into that, I put the unaltered original BP head away and saved it for posterity. The last thing I wanted to do was wreck it. And by the way, after a couple of seasons with the original Vibrac rod and Alpha big-end, I put the precious original GF cases aside and built up a Comet case; with new GF flywheels I had gotten from Harry Bellville, an Alpha and a Carrillo rod. I didn't want to chance wrecking the GF case with a rod breakage. This crank gave excellent service but I ended up running a special Picador-style flywheel assembly that Ian had done for me. This used a silver plated steel-caged INA needle roller big-end bearing in a Carrillo rod. BH: Carrillo has been the supreme name in racing con-rods for about 50 years now, as far as I know. What about your cylinder and piston group? CP: I installed a thin Nikasil aluminum sleeve 0.001" tight in the muff, overbored 0.080" as allowed in AHRMA, which gives 521cc. This involved boring out the Comet case a little to suit. I ran the JE forged piston in it with 0.003" skirt clearance and this gave excellent results. I used a moly top ring and a Total Seal second ring with a three-piece oil ring. Using 15-50 synthetic oil, the Nikasil sleeve and the piston showed virtually no wear over several seasons' use. I recommend Nikasil alloy liners for street use as well. This 41 horse was pretty good (and the bike felt VERY fast on the track!) but I found that I got slightly better acceleration using 24-25 degrees of spark lead so this was my final combination. I had a reliable engine with good performance and a

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good torque range from 4000-7000. The motor would rev freely to 8000+ with no ill effects but there was much less power there and no point to stressing it. BH: Tell me more about the exhaust systems you tried. CP: We tried several including the Manx megaphone, but a 1-3/4" x 30" pipe connected to the small DBD Gold Star meg gave the best overall power band on the GF. But only after the exhaust port had major flow work done. Otherwise, the standard GF 2" x 44" pipe is the way to go. But on further reflection, I think if I had fiddled with the Manx exhaust and the carb tuning long enough, I might have been able to get it to be the best one. BH: What about gearbox and clutch? CP: At first I used the standard Albion box and clutch. This particular bike had been shipped with the No. 16 wide ratios and a kickstarter which conformed to AMA race regs in 1950. Perhaps Wellesley `trading ordered it that way, I don't know. I needed close-ratios for AHRMA, of course. The clutch was okay for a while, but before long I converted to a Newby toothed belt primary drive and the alloy clutch he sells for it. These saved a lot of weight and were dead reliable so I highly recommend them! The original primary cover will fit over them with minor internal grinding. A now-dry primary meant that I needed good oil sealing on the crankshaft. A double-sealed ball bearing from a bearing house handled that simply and successfully. BH: Others have said these sealed bearings will not keep 100% of the oil from passing through them. CP: I also installed a pretty efficient atmospheric crankcase breather using the original dynamo hole, with a 3/4" bore hose going up and back to a one-way flapper valve and then into a regulation catch can. Little or no oil ever reached the can, so I think I had very little pressure in the case and this must have helped the sealed bearing hold the oil. BH: That was very clever, Carleton! It sounds like by the use of the flapper valve and large-bore pipe, you may have actually been achieving a pressure in the case below atmospheric during running conditions. Your low-clearance piston and efficient ring set probably minimized blow-by gases. Pressure below atmospheric in the case would have given you free torque by reducing the pumping loss of the bottom of the piston, and besides that, the double-sealed bearing would have been leaking air inwards, rather than oil outwards. Altogether a very desirable situation. CP: Right. Back to the gearbox... It had happened that on a visit to Harry Bellville just after acquiring the Flash, I bought a nice box of Albion and Burman odds and ends he'd had for 25 years or so. Out of this I changed my gearbox to close ratios. BH: Omigod, Carleton! When my brother Tom and I visited Harry in `64 he showed me that same box, under the stairs going up to his loft. I remember it had an Electron Albion shell that was very light, and a whole lot of gears and things in there. He said the Works had sold it to him as the leftovers from their 500 racing. He snapped it up like he did any time they offered him anything. CP: That was the very box, Bill. There was one pre-war style Albion racing shell remaining. BH: Just as an aside for a minute, I recall that in his famous series of articles during WWII on building the Norton Works racers, Joe Craig noted that some favoured an Electron gearbox shell. But he preferred the strength and reliability of a Y-alloy casting for the gearbox. Another clever point he made was that ALL the controls of a T.T. bike need to be as light, positive and effortless as possible. If they aren't, as the race wears on and the rider grows fatigued, he will start changing gear less, to the detriment of his speed and lap time. CP: I have to agree with both of those points, Bill. The electron Albion case I have is light, but seems a bit skimpy around the bearing bosses and so forth. The gearbox takes a terrific beating in a racing motorcycle, and nowhere more than at the Isle of Man. Anyway, the close-ratio Albion did work well, up-shifted beautifully, and I used it a long time. But it did have a quirk, and no matter what I did to it, I never could get it to downshift 3-2 reliably; it would over-shift into a neutral about 50% of the time. So for safety's sake, once I got up to speed in a race, I used only third and top gears. In `97 the box did `grenade' and wrecked most of the contents; but without seizing up, fortunately. I put a new set of close-ratio gears into it and ran it a while longer without any more blow-ups. But I realized the high torque the engine was putting out was overstressing the ancient original parts. You have not only metal fatigue, you know, but according to Phil Irving, `metal decay' with old parts. So after a year or so I changed over to a standard postwar Comet Burman BAP box with a set of Nova Gear close-ratio gears fitted. Bob Stafford had loaned Nova his set of original Burman close-ratio gears. They replicated them in the best modern EN (`Emergency Number') 36 steel including all new shafts. I might mention that the original Burman close-ratio sets were serious racing parts with a few big dogs on them. Plenty of backlash for instant racing gearchanges. Not the itsy-bitsy multitude of little dogs like the standard Comet box.

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I sealed up the BAP box to keep the oil in, and it stayed in well. The trick is to use just enough 75w-90 or similar light gear oil, Mobil I synthetic if you like, so that the bottoms of the gears are spinning in it and throw it around to lubricate everything. But not so much oil that the gear set is `schwimming in oil' which results in leakage everywhere. Besides, it creates more oil viscosity drag loss through the box. The Burman is perhaps not quite so handsome as the Albion, but that was my final arrangement. My original Albion is still intact with a good set of close gears in it and the whole GF can be put back entirely to original spec with the BP head and big T.T. Garb someday. BH: What about the cycle parts? CP: The original GF parts with Thornton front and rear suspension units, and struts to sup port the rear of the racing seat. I also used a Moto-Guzzi telescopic steering damper rather than the original Girdraulic friction damper. The handling with this, and the 110-80/18 rear and 90-90/18 front Avon track tires I had, was wonderful. I highly recommend this setup. There WAS that very nasty, scary shudder, lockup and wobble thing with the girdraulics that David Dunfey recently wrote up for MPH: when using the front brakes hard over bumpy surfaces, which resulted in the forks locking in full extension. The only thing I could do about it was avoid heavy braking, by using the gearbox for retardation; and that's what I did. This helps keep your corner velocity up anyway (essential racing a 500 single) and forces the rider to be as smooth as possible. John Surtees told me one time he'd experienced some of the same issues in the early `50s with his GF. BH: Evidently the smaller wheels are more prone to that than the 21" and the best answer is to be careful not to let the girdraulic fork extend too far. What did you do for a fuel tank? CP: At first the original standard GF tank. But later, while attending the Vincent rally at Bonneville, Mitch Talcove offered me a sectioned tank just like Marty Dickerson's in a parts swap. That tank worked from a racing angle (better carb access and lighter) and from the PR angle as well! Attractive young ladies would approach me in the pits to enthuse over its shape and colour. That hadn't happened before. BH: Carleton, there must be `something' about a Grey Flash. Marty Dickerson told me about the time he had his at a race and an AYL eyed it for a while, then asked him, "Which is the Grey Flash, the bike, or YOU?" Okay, let's finish up this segment with the $64 Question. What colour are Grey Flashes? CP: I agree with David Dunfey that they were originally shipped in a range of colours from a flattish light grey enamel, to a grey with a tinge of green in it. I have a box of original GF damper covers that are a pleasing grey-green. To my eye it appears identical to a colour that A T & T paints their fleet-trucks, and that's what I painted mine! Bill Hoddinott MPH 695 Page 15 BH: Okay, let's delve into your T.T. Replica. I always thought they were a beautiful piece of work. CP: It was a 1937 production TTR and was first sold by the Works directly to Eric Oliver, who later became famous as a World Sidecar Champion on Manx Nortons after the War. Eric entered his first T.T. race with it in the Isle of Man in `37 with Works support. Later on, the bike went through several hands before and after WWII. In about the late `60s it came to one Ted Croft who did a total restoration. Before Ted, the owners had apparently - been riding it on the road for a while. It had a dynamo rigged up in front of the crankcase like a Velocette and so forth. Ted had Bob Stafford rebuild the engine to standard for him, and he kept it for quite a few years. The next part of the story involves a Californian named Ben Kalka, who was something of a dealer and entrepreneur in vintage bikes. He was buzzing around, buying bikes and sometime in the mid-'80s he appeared over in England on a buying expedition. It appears he had some contact with Ted Davis at this point. Ben got wind that Ted Croft (T.C.) had this rare TTR and that he might part with it. There is a story that one day, by appointment, Ben and Ted Davis (T.D.) called at T.C.'s home; and Ben had a brief case FILLED with 100 pound sterling notes. When the three sat down, Ben opened it, startling T.C. quite a bit. Ben told him, "Ted, I want to buy your TT Replica, and you just reach into this case and take all the money you want for it!" So T.C., overwhelmed by this offer, started to pull wads of notes out of the case. About the time he had just about all of them, Ben started to get nervous and said, "Hold on a second, don't you think that's about enough?" So T.C. pulled out one more, and stopped.

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Nobody knows just how much money was in there, but the deal was completed, the paperwork done, and Ben and T.D. departed with the bike. But as the legend has it, T.C. soon felt bad pangs of 'seller's remorse' and wished he had the bike back, instead of the money. But it was too late! BH: Carleton, that's quite a tale! What was next? CP: Ben had the bike for a time, but got into some kind of difficulties with his business, and it passed to Dan Statnikov about 1990. I knew about the bike, and kind of fancied it; and went by to see Dan in New Mexico about it once or twice. He was asking something over $20K at first. In `94, after I had started racing, Dan and I came to terms and I was able to acquire it. I wanted to compete with a Vincent in Pre-'40 Class in addition to Class C, and this looked like the ideal bike. BH: Did you go ahead and put it on the track right away? CP: I did give it a tryout, and it ran fine; but let me back up a minute and tell you that long before this, way back in `81, I had been able to get a genuine all-out Works TT engine from Tom Wegman. This was out of a complete pre-war Works TT bike the factory had sold to L.A. based John Tremanus right after WWII. According to Marty Dickerson, John had taken it up to Rosamond Dry Lake for the speed trials in 1947. He hit 105 mph on it. There is a picture of him making the run in the November 1947 issue of "The Motorcyclist" magazine. The machine was then sold to Sonny Angel but the engine ended up with Harry Morrow who was a big Formula 3 Cooper car racer. At first all I got was the engine, but since then I have been able to recover and reassemble most of the rest of it! Anyway, I did have this really fine Works race engine, with the best of everything they knew when they built it, so I decided to use it in the Oliver bike. But before I did, I took it apart and went through it, put in a Maughan INA big-end and a Carrillo rod. It is a fact that the original Series A con-rods, standard or Vibrac like the one in this engine, are just so old now that they are not reliable to race with. If you use them, you're almost certain to have a blow-up and wipe your crankcase out. And that was the last thing I wanted to do. This Works engine, like my Olives engine, had a Y-alloy crankcase. Only the Works race motors and a handful of special Series B production TTRs had these spec cases. BH: Right, Y-alloy was developed long ago as a high-strength, high-temp casting aluminum and used for ages for racing heads and pistons. Standard post-war Vincent heads were all made of it. It cost more, but, was the best material available to keep its strength at the high temps air-cooled cylinder heads often reach. That can be 450-500 F or more under racing conditions in hot weather. There is a story that the first singles Vincent built for T.T. racing had Electron crankcases, but that. proved too weak, and it was then they went to Y-alloy. CP: It is said that the racing Twin Ginger Wood used before the War had a crankcase of Y - alloy., too. The Y -alloy case is much stronger than the standard case, I believe. You know one of the five cylinder studs on the A single goes into a protruding boss. This boss sometimes breaks on the standard case, but never with the Y-alloy. And I inadvertently gave mine some terrific abuse later, as I'll describe; and it still didn't break. This Works engine had a late bronze head (you know the company had at least three patterns of bronze heads) with a big exhaust port and a stub for a 1-3/4" exhaust pipe to clamp onto. It had a RH-side intake port, like all As, with a flange fitting for a 1-3/16" T.T. carb rather than the clip fit stub of the iron head. I might mention that it had an alloy muff cylinder with a thick (1/4") wall cast iron liner, flanged both at the top AND the bottom. BH: My reading in the classical literature of T.T. racing suggests that a thick iron liner is better than a thin one, and all the Manx Nortons and so forth followed that practice. What kind of top sealing joint did your head have? CP: Double-ground just like a post-war Vincent. I never had any leaks. At first I ran my rebuilt Works engine with an Omega 8 to 1 piston, but before long Ian Hamilton told me Ron Kemp had some forged Omega 9 to 1 racing pistons and I got a couple of these. The pre-war head had a smaller chamber size than the post-war so I got about 11 to 1 compression. And BTW, I believe the pre-war head's combustion chamber layout is the one the Works followed when they designed the Big Port heads in 1950; as being slightly less detonation-prone than the post-war standard head. BH: How did it run? CP: The first time I had it out was to a Sears Point, California AHRMA race. The temperature that day was about 85 F, and as usual, I was chasing Ralph Auer as hard as I could. After a while, a fairly loud rattle started up, and it got louder. "Oh hell," I thought, "something's coming apart!" Anyway, I finished the race and told my helpers back at the pits. Nobody knew what to think so they said, let it cool off and see if it still does it. So I let it sit for a couple of hours, and then when I fired it up again, the rattle was gone and it seemed perfectly normal. So anyway, I determined to try to run it again the next day.

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Next day, I'm out there again, another hot day. After a while, here comes the strange (apparently mechanical) rattle back at full power. I keep on, and next thing you know, BANG! and the engine quits. Later, we took the head off to, see a big hole in the middle of the piston!

BH: What you're describing is overheating, followed by severe detonation (the loud rattle), followed by pre-ignition which holed the piston. CP: Exactly. So I realized the 11 to 1 was too high with the bronze head. But I wanted to run a high ratio because you get more torque and power that way. I knew from my research that the Works made a few aluminum heads with big fins on them, about the size of a Manx head of the era. So this would be a legitimate replacement for AHRMA racing. I scratched around, and found Kal Carrick in Australia who had some suitable new unmachined alloy castings; and got a couple of them from him. John Renwick agreed to machine them, with squish bands like a Terry Prince head. Then my machinist here added the extra finning and re-cut the bathtub chamber squish bands to 30 degrees and matched a JE forged piston to the chamber giving my 11 to 1. John had set the head up to use two plugs and racing coil valve springs. It was made to use a 1.8" intake valve, standard size, not 1.88" like the GF, which was Big Port size. And while we were at it, we made the intake port to suit the 17/16" T.T. Carb. We also built a new aluminum cylinder barrel assembly with a cast alloy muff from Australia around an 0.080" oversize bore Nikasil liner like on the GF. I set the crankshaft up with a crank trigger for a twin-spark coil ignition like the GF, and used 22-24 degrees spark lead. BH: You had your original GF 1-7/16" T.T. carb that came with the BP head, but where did you get another for the TTR? CP: I was lucky enough to acquire a perfect pair of them from Jim Avery of Wichita, Kansas in `97. He had them from Harry Bellville years before. The story was that they were the pair Burns and Wright used to take the World Records in `55. B&W had shipped them to Harry along with the two bikes and their other spare parts as part of the deal after Bonneville in `56. BH: What other gear did you have in your new edition TTR engine now? CP: John Renwick made me an all-out cam with 0.470" lift for it, and we had to make custom camfollowers, As you know, the layout is different in the A and the originals were just not strong enough. I had them breaking. Of course, his cam was a monster, and probably stressed the followers a lot more than the factory cam. I didn't use my gasflow guy on the TTR, and I didn't get as much rear wheel horsepower and torque. But I did have 34 hp and 34 ft lbs at the rear wheel now, with reliability and a good power range from 4000 to 7000 just like on the Flash. I used a 2" x 44" pipe on this bike. So in this form, I won the championships with it. The upgrades eliminated the overheating problems completely.

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BH: Okay, let's look at some of the other parts, gearbox, primary, frame, fuel tank and so forth. CP: I used the Nova close-ratio four speed gearset in a Burman on it, and no problems. After a while, I used the Newby primary belt and clutch on it. Same as the GF, and the same good results. I used the original Oliver frame, which had the standard 7/8" front downtube, rather than the 1" front downtube frame of the Works bike. By this point I had actually acquired the latter frame, but I never used it. The top tube and the downtube of the A look kind of skinny, but I was never aware of any handling problems on the smooth tracks we raced on, nor did it ever break. I had a Works Performance coil-over unit on the Oliver Brampton racing fork, and it was very, very good. I told you I had somewhat decayed Electron original brakes on the GF, and they never broke, but I never used them hard. Well, on the TTR I also had the original composite brakes. These had drums comprising aluminium side plates with iron rubbing surfaces bolted onto them, and aluminium brake plates with no scoops. I DID use them hard, but no trouble with them either. BH: True, the standard A front frame looks kind of skimpy, but the very successful Velocette Works racers used a similar frame layout, and won many T.T. races and world championships with it. In the end, results count the most. What about your fuel and oil tanks? CP: I used the original TTR oil tank of stainless steel but didn't dare use the all-stainless Oliver gas tank. It was too fragile with all the soldered joints, very heavy and too big for shortcircuit racing. I used a standard pre-war Comet tank that worked well. Eventually I got a craftsman to make me a replica SS fuel tank, which is still on there. Good rubber-mounting is the key to reliability with your tanks. BH: What about your rear fork? CP: I used the original TTR fork with a Works Performance shock on one side and a long Pettiford sidecar-rated spring in a springbox on the other, with struts to support the rear of the seat. I ultimately used the same 18" tires and alloy rims as on the GF, after starting off with the 20" and 19" TTR wheels. The handling of the TTR in its final form was just as good as that of the GF. BH: Carleton, I suppose that covers about everything. Thank you so much for sharing this fascinating story with MPH readers! Any final thoughts? CP: Bill, besides those mentioned, I have to thank all the many friends who helped me off and on by going out to the meets, pitting for me and supporting me in a thousand ways over the years of racing!

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